Fool Me Twice

by Carrie Aarons

You think you’re prepared for it … the death of someone you love. But you can’t know. You can’t know the kind of dagger, the dull kind inserted slowly into the muscle that the world views as the symbol of love. It rips apart every piece of flesh, every nerve, every vessel, every synapse.

You never know if you’ll be breathing in the next second after this one. Which is why I take every chance those precious seconds give me.

Especially Henley. That girl has no weakness, and the last thing I want is sympathy from the spitfire. I wouldn’t be able to bear seeing pity in her eyes when she finds out I was the kid in elementary school with cancer. The one who missed six months of school for chemo, the one they had fundraisers for, the little boy whose shaved head appeared in his second grade yearbook.

Which is more dangerous: the game I’m playing to break his heart, or the fact that mine is disappointed I’ll have to ignore him in the coming days?

The fact that it’s this attached already can’t be a good omen.

there are moments during the week where I feel like I can’t continue to breathe, like it’s all sucked out and my vision sparks with dots.

“Addiction is a disease,

“People always want what they can’t have,”

I knew it would be hard to disentangle myself from Lincoln Kolb. I had no idea it would devastate me on every level of my soul.

It’s at this moment that I know, even if she isn’t saying it, that she loves me, too.

I’ve never felt more alive.

“Showing weakness is not one of my strong suits.

I’m supposed to be this legend, this unbreakable captain of my sport. What would they say if they knew I was the kid in elementary school with cancer? The dying child who had all the fundraisers thrown for him? I don’t want them to look at me like that.”

“I can’t imagine being without you.”

I guess she fucking did. Got revenge on Lincoln Kolb. Broke my fucking heart. Thanks to her, I’ll never trust a girl with it again.

I’m in love with him, plain and simple. There is nothing else I want more now than to apologize, to grovel, and to have him come back to me.

“I did it.” My voice breaks, and tears begin to slide down my face. “I completed your bucket list.

I’ll never find someone I love as much as him. I don’t want to find someone.

What he did was awful, but what I did was worse.”

You’re hellfire and unbendable, but I fucking love that. I’ve never felt more myself than when I’m with you.”

Henley Rowan came into my life like a meteor, destroying anything that came before her and changing the landscape of my life forever after. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.